The Great Glebe Garage Sale, 2011 Version...

[fajrdrako]

Every year on the fourth Saturday in May, my neighbourhood hosts The Great Glebe Garage Sale. I love seeing the stuff people have, the stuff they want to sell. Some years it's a treasure trove, one way or another.

I love yard sales in general, but don't often get to them - to do yard sales properly, you need a car. With the Great Glebe Garage Sale, I don't need to go anywhere. It's terrific.

Today, it looked cloudy in the morning and rain was predicted. I think that, and the fact that Bank Street is torn up by construction, and the marathon was taking place on Queen Elizabeth Drive, kept a lot of people away - the crowds weren't as huge as usual. Which was good for me, since I was buying, not selling. More bargains, less competition for them.

I wandered for a while in the morning, then took some things home and met up with fairestcat, who wandered with me for a while. At the corner of Fourth and Bank, we ate Polish sausages and watched the crowd go by.

My haul this year:

1. Books:
   
   
   • A Canadian Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker
     
   • The Grand Sophy and The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer
     
   • Insight Guides: Cyprus
     
   • The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George
     
   • Ulysses by James Joyce
     
   • Canadian Writer's Companion by Anthony Luengo
   
   
2. Books in French:
   
   
   • Drôle à Mort by Gilles Latulippe
     
   • la défense lincoln by Michael Connelly
     
   • La Croix de L'Occident by Max Gallo - this is one I've really, really wanted to read for some time - I think I even took it out of the library once
   
   
3. A 2011 calendar with pictures of Guatamala
   
4. A box of cards and envelopes with pictures of the tropics
   
5. A sommelier's apron
   
6. A set of four cloth place mats
   
7. Two Michelin maps (both 1 in:6.30 miles), one of "Great Britain Scotland" and one of "Great Britain, South East Midlands, East Anglia"
   
8. An X-Men graphic novel. I was chatting with the man I bought it from, who used to work at The Comic Collector's Shoppe. He started telling me who Stan Lee was; I forebore from saying "I was reading X-Men before you were born, sonny." Then I got a DVD from him, Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters & Marvels.
   
9. A 10" x 13" pan
   
10. Four metal bookends
    
11. A tote bag with palm trees on it. It looks in fact, just like this:
    
    
    
    
12. A rice cooker
    
13. A slow cooker
    
14. A lovely blue pashmina
    
15. A nicely designed white ceramic bowl (the closest I could find toe the mixing bowls I was looking for - really, much, much prettier, 7.5" across)
    
16. Plastic cover for a tissue box, in marbly burgundy
    
17. A wireless telephone
    
18. An Indian dress/tunic (is it a long kurti? I should have asked the woman I bought it from what that style is called)
    
19. A shirt in a green and black pattern
    
20. A v-neck sweater in my favourite shade of blue wool
    
21. Two lined hardcover notebooks with nice covers
    
22. Three ceramic coasters with pictures of bird houses on them
    
23. A yogurt maker
    
24. A tiny change purse with a chain on it
    
25. A DVD set for The Pretender, season 1, which seems to be bilingual (which is why I got it)
    
26. A pair of black Reebok running shoes that fit perfectly. There were other great shoes and even greater boots, but all the decent ones were in sizes way too small or way too large for me.
    
27. A teapot with a cow and a bumblebee:
    
    
    
    It made me laugh when I looked at it, and I figured that anything that made me laugh on sight was worth buying for $2.
    
    
    All together, I spent about $25.00 - $30 if you count lunch.